Sacramento County's top elections official says she has turned over suspicious voter registration cards to the California Secretary of State's Office.
Jill LaVine, the county's registrar of voters, said her office has found widespread irregularities in cards submitted by a company hired by the Republican Party to conduct a registration drive.
Circulators working for businesswoman Monica Harris are filling out registration cards for prospective voters and asking them simply to sign their names, LaVine said.
Many county residents have called LaVine's office to complain when they found out – via a registration confirmation card sent by the county – that they were registered as Republicans when they didn't want to be, LaVine said.
Since September, Harris' circulators have turned in about 31,000 registration cards to the county. At least one-fourth of them have been thrown out because of inaccuracies, LaVine said.
The problem is happening because circulators are paid for each card they submit, LaVine said.
A person who identified himself as Harris' son at Momentum Political Services, her Sacramento company, said Harris was out of state and unavailable for comment.
Shannan Velayas, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's Office, said the office considers complaints to be confidential. Such complaints are investigated by the office's election fraud unit and forwarded to a county's district attorney when criminal activity is found.
LaVine said she has had problems with circulators working for Harris for years. She said her office started documenting questionable cards in September.
The cards often contain writing that is too sloppy to read, or transposed numbers.
Many of them turn out to be inaccurate – 24 percent can't be entered into the county system because of various problems on the cards themselves, LaVine said.
The county has found other irregularities when it sent out verification cards to residents. In one stretch, the county had 82 of 84 cards returned because they didn't contain a known address, she said.
About 20 people who received cards have called LaVine's office to complain that they were registered for the wrong party, she said.
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
• Read more articles by Brad Branan
Order Reprint
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "Report Abuse" link below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.